Where You Go, I Will Go
by UnnamedElement
Summary: Lady Galadriel's message was a riddle too twisted for a Wood-elf and a Dwarf to initially unwind... This is a story of a friendship fraught with mutual ignorance: the concessions a dwarf makes to an elf, and the choices that elf makes for their peculiar friendship. It is how Legolas and Gimli pass through the threat of death to find, together, a better truth. (March 2016 Teitho)
1. Part I: Discussion at Isengard

**Author's note:** The title references an interaction between Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn in "The White Rider" ( _The Two Towers_ ), in which Gimli says to Legolas, at the eaves of Fangorn, "You are a Wood-elf, anyway, though elves of any kind are strange folk. Yet you comfort me. Where you go, I will go." The story itself is an interpretation of the dialogue in the epigraph below.

Scenes take place from March through May of TA 3019, beginning at Isengard and ending sometime shortly after Aragorn's coronation, but before his wedding. The chapter lengths are a bit erratic because, while this is technically a short story, I did not want to post 24 pages in one chapter. It was written for the March 2016 Teitho challenge "Life and Death" (did not place).

* * *

 **Where You Go, I Will Go**

* * *

" _To Legolas she sent this word:_

 _Legolas Greenleaf long under tree,  
In joy thou hast lived. Beware of the sea!  
If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore,  
Thou heart shall then rest in the forest no more."_

 _Gandalf fell silent and shut his eyes._

" _Then she sent me no message?" said Gimli and bent his head._

" _Dark are her words," said Legolas, "and little do they mean to those that receive them."_

" _That is no comfort," said Gimli._

" _What then?" said Legolas._ _ **"**_ _Would you have her speak openly to you of your death?"_

" _Yes, if she had naught else to say."_

" _What is that?" said Gandalf, opening his eyes. "Yes, I think I can guess what her words may mean..."_

–" _The White Rider" (_ _The Two Towers_ _)_

* * *

 **Part I: A Discussion at Isengard  
**

* * *

"Perhaps you should go elsewhere to smoke, besides where we are making food," Legolas said teasingly. "The scent is confusing!"

Gandalf, Théoden, and Aragorn had consulted, and the next day they would leave again for Helm's Deep and Aragorn, eventually, for Minas Tirith. Since Aragorn had broken the news to his companions, all Pippin could do was ask questions, and talk at length about his fear of being hungry on the journey. So, with Isengard taken and food stocks revealed, Legolas had set to making Pippin food that he could fit in his pockets. After his ordeal with the orcs and his newfound return to pipe and nourishment, Pippin found this extraordinarily comforting.

It was a moment of silence and rest for all, before exiting the eye of the storm.

Aragorn laughed around his pipe, and his eyes glinted as he smiled at his elven companion, who sat with Merry and Pippin at a long and damp wooden table in the midst of the ruins of Isengard, with a small array of ingredients spread out before him.

"Baking before battle!" Aragorn said. "It is not exactly how I imagined a warrior of Mirkwood might prepare for further conflict."

"Oh, I am certainly preparing for conflict," Legolas murmured, glancing briefly toward Aragorn and then behind his shoulder as Gimli stalked toward them.

With Aragorn's prompting, Legolas continued in a louder voice.

"Many elves enjoy domestic tasks, and I grew up for a time in a baker's home, though this is not, exactly, baking," Legolas explained with a shrug. "But now Pippin is fretting for his journey, and hungry, and together the three of us have the skill to fix that worry. Would you deny your companions a peaceful task, that may prepare their hearts for their journeys ahead?"

"Nay," said Aragorn, smiling and lackadaisical. "I could never deny that."

"He could never deny _you_ your frivolities, he means, my friend," said Gimli with a gruff chuckle, as he came even with them, but then began already to turn away, "but always we can taunt you for them, Master Elf!"

Legolas shrugged and smiled slightly, and, at Legolas' next words, Gimli finished turning and walked fully off, Aragorn trailing behind him as Gimli demanded pipeweed from Aragorn's refilled pouch for his own pastime.

"So it is," Legolas said, to no one in particular. "But hobbits, at least, do not think baking a frivolity! Even in the middle of war."

Merry and Pippin murmured their agreement and fell into companionable peace.

There was quiet for some time, apart from the scrape of knives and the sound of the lapping and receding water. Hobbits and elf rolled oats in honey and chopped nuts with small blades until they were cut thin and fine. The hobbits pushed the nuts into a pile with both sets of small hands and then shoveled them one scoop at a time toward Legolas, where he folded them little by little into the oat mix, kneading it stickily beneath his hands until it became, with the dry nuts, more firm.

Finally, Merry broke the silence.

"Are you and Gimli fighting?" asked Merry.

"I do not pretend to understand the moods of dwarves," Legolas said simply, not looking up from the oats he rolled underhand.

"Do you remember what Old Mister Bilbo said, Merry?" asked Pippin. "Come not to the elves for counsel, for they will not tell you the truth at all."

"I'm not sure that's exactly what he said, Pip," Merry muttered at the same time that Legolas spoke.

"Is that so?" Legolas laughed. "Well, I like to think myself more candid than most, but there is nothing to be done to change the traits of one's folk, I guess."

Legolas divided the oat mixture up into three large sections and then set to dividing his own portion further into balls smaller than the palm of his hand, rolling and flattening and rolling and flattening each bit, over and over.

"Well, are you fighting, Legolas?" Merry insisted.

"With Gimli?" Legolas asked evasively.

"Yes, that's what he said!" said Pippin.

"No, we are not fighting," Legolas said finally, checking the hobbits' progress with their own oat balls.

He fiddled for a moment with the size of Pippin's work and then raised his hands from the table to gesture lightly behind him, toward where he had heard the dwarf retreat earlier, and from where he heard the dwarf now returning.

"We have just had a disagreement," Legolas said simply.

"What are we having a disagreement about, Master Elf?" said Gimli.

He stopped behind Legolas, his pipe hanging from his lips; it was stuffed with pipeweed he had wheedled from Aragorn, for he had not wanted to wade through the water—at his height—for a chance at Saruman's Longbottom leaf.

"A pretty riddle," said Legolas tersely.

Legolas did not look up, but finished rolling the last ball of Merry's oats and nuts beneath his nimble fingers. He set it aside to dry in a line beside the others.

"Ah," said Gimli, huffing. " _That_ riddle. Well, as far as I am concerned, as soon as we turn toward the sea, I will be sending you back—"

Legolas stood abruptly from the table and then dropped into a crouch for a moment to wipe the sticky oats and honey onto the fabric over his calves.

"You will attract bugs, wiping your hands like that," said Gimli sharply, cutting himself off as Legolas rose.

"I will not be sent anywhere, Master Dwarf," said Legolas, "least of all by you."

"Are you leaving us here?" asked Merry loudly, as Pippin began a string of questions at the same time. "I know you only pledged to get us to the mountains and you are quite far off that now."

"Bother, Legolas! You're leaving? Where will you go?" Pippin exclaimed.

Legolas did not speak; he chose to slide instead into the space between Merry and Pippin's work, so that they three could sit together shoulder-to-shoulder and inspect the food. Also, Legolas had learned in his short time travelling with hobbits, that to insinuate oneself into their lives and stories by even insinuating oneself into their bodily space—especially in the midst of conflict—protected one quite well from accusations of wrongdoing, as if the Little Folk cast a benevolent spell on all those Big Folk around them. And so Legolas now settled comfortably with Pippin at one side, and Merry at the other—or as comfortably as he could while trying not to feel craven, as Gimli stood imposingly behind him.

"I am not going anywhere, dear hobbits," said Legolas, with his head bent over their work on the table. "Except wherever Strider and Mithrandir will have us follow."

Gimli was now angry at the elf. He was seething, and it was apparent.

Aragorn cut in sharply.

"You will be sent," said Aragorn, and Legolas straightened his back immediately and then bowed his head toward Aragorn slightly as he heeded.

"You will go elsewhere," Aragorn continued, "to quarrel."

"But _you_ know what—" Gimli began to explain.

"Not here," hissed Aragorn again, firmly, looking at the hobbits, who sat wide-eyed and watching the confusing and half-woven conversation that possessed the last of their Fellowship who, alone in Middle-earth—after the hobbits' tumultuous week apart—had seemed to them, until a moment before, absolutely steadying and sane.

Legolas had already risen and laid a hand on each of the hobbits' shoulders. He bent low so that his head was between their curly crowns, and his own honey hair caught slightly in the wind as he spoke softly to them. The loose strands that danced around his fair face tickled for a moment Pippin's nose.

"I would press a bit of dried fruit into the center of each one, if I were you," Legolas said, with a smile. "It makes them taste like a dream!"

He reached behind his back and untied a pouch from his belt, dropping it into Pippin's eager hands, which were outstretched like a child on his birthday.

"Raisins, saved all the way from Lorien!" Legolas proclaimed. "And I am sure there is similar to be found elsewhere in Saruman's lauder, should you run out."

Pippin would have squealed, but instead he just clasped the elf's hand and exclaimed.

"Merry! We'll have proper sweets!" he cried.

And Merry chuckled as Legolas laughed loudly and then turned away. He waved a hand over his shoulder to indicate Gimli should follow him.

The hobbits quickly set to work pressing raisins into the centers of the oat balls, and Aragorn puffed on his pipe thoughtfully, watching the elf and dwarf pick their way some distance from the hobbits, until they stood out of earshot on a small pile of rubble, raised like a hill above the flooded mess; the bodies of several orcs floated and were putrefying nearby.

Aragorn could not hear what Gimli and Legolas said to one another, nor could the hobbits, but they watched from a distance as a fierce argument was born, blossomed, and raged.

At first, elf and dwarf stood calmly facing one another. Legolas' back was not tense and his arms dangled loosely at his sides; Gimli leaned forward toward the elf as he often did when he spoke, and gestured harmlessly with his hands, to emphasize his points. They stood with a foot of rock between them, Legolas looking down at Gimli and Gimli looking up at him.

Suddenly, Gimli gestured more viciously at the sky as if pointing out something that flew overhead, and Legolas crossed his arms. Legolas turned his back to Gimli and set his eyes toward Rohan; Gimli threw his arms down to his sides roughly, and then raised his eyes to the sky and yelled. Gimli stamped his boot on the ground and Legolas turned and stared at him coldly. Legolas laughed lightly, but then froze abruptly to gaze harder at Gimli than before, and he whispered words to the dwarf that barely moved his face at all.

Quick as lightning, Gimli grabbed at Legolas' forearm and Legolas swatted Gimli's hand away. Gimli grabbed at it again and yelled, his face twisted in some kind of horror; Legolas pulled away fiercely, but then took both of the dwarf's armored arms in his long hands, and he then shoved the dwarf, but lightly. Gimli seemed to roar and shove the elf back, harder. Legolas swayed and crossed his arms; he pulled himself to his full height, and looked down at Gimli.

Gimli stamped again and yelled again, and finally Legolas sunk to his knees on the stones and then shifted to cross his legs in a diamond before him. Legolas sat on the ground and stared up into Gimli's face from below.

Abruptly, Legolas laughed and smiled, and Gimli reddened and blustered. Legolas dropped his head and appeared to laugh again, but his face was hidden behind his hair and Merry thought maybe his shoulders were heaved instead by tears.

Gimli dropped to his heels and reached a hand to touch the elf's face; Legolas did not pull away. Gimli tapped Legolas' cheek and forced the elf's eyes to meet his own.

"What is happening, Strider?" Merry asked Aragorn, once the two friends had settled together on the rubble.

Backs away from their companions, they looked out together toward Rohan, and no more words appeared to pass between them.

"I believe they grieve," said Aragorn simply.

Aragorn stood and walked to the table where the hobbits still sat. He began to pop each oat ball from the damp tabletop with a pinch and twist of his thumb and forefinger.

"For Boromir?" Pippin asked.

Pippin looked up into Aragorn's face imploringly, desperately.

"Perhaps," Aragorn said.

But he lowered his eyes, and lined all the oat balls up anew. Unfastened from the table and prepared to dry, he looked for a pouch in which to pack them for the youngest hobbit.

This new warning was just another worry for which Aragorn did not have enough hours in the day over which to fret.

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 _Thank you for reading Part 1!  
_


	2. Parts II & III: Pelennor & Black Gates

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* * *

 **Part II: The Aftermath of Pelennor Fields**

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They did not, after all, spend long at Helm's Deep. Legolas and Gimli had instead allied themselves with a distraught Aragorn and his kin—the Dúnedain and the sons of Elrond—and walked the Paths of the Dead; they had brought men from the coastal kingdoms and taken the enemy's ships, and sailed up the Anduin unto a mighty and sprawling fight at the fields of Pelennor. They had survived another harrowing battle without grievous injury, and their friends who did not, Aragorn healed best he could and then sent to the city. Legolas and Gimli had taken to clearing the battlefield and moving the wounded, and now it was time to rest.

Legolas sat on a rock by their tent alongside Aragorn's quarters, among their company's camp at the Pelennor. His eyes were distant, and his bow at his feet; there were only a few arrows left in the quiver at his back.

"Why so quiet?" asked Gimli, as he walked up to his friend on his perch.

"I have heard the gulls' cry, friend Gimli," said Legolas absently. "And I am not yet dead."

Gimli watched Legolas run long fingers along his own forearms, as if wondering at his own body's continued existence.

"Well," said Gimli gruffly, sitting on the ground beside the rock and placing one arm on it, so he leaned against the elf's thigh, "perhaps you have escaped your fate."

"No," said Legolas abruptly.

He looked down to Gimli and placed a hand on Gimli's coarse hair, almost ruffling it.

"No," he continued quietly. "One does not escape fate, especially not after one has chosen to set himself adrift in mortal time, and especially not when one's fate is heralded by the Lady of the Wood."

"Hm," said Gimli. "I for one continue to hope she is wrong."

"As do I, in this, at least," said Legolas. "Unless my death were to serve a greater purpose, beyond falling in battle, for I am not done here. I feel torn between Middle-earth and somewhere else, but my heart burns with the need to stay."

"Then stay. Where else could your heart bid you go, Master Elf?"

Legolas took his hand from Gimli's head and rubbed both palms along his dirty trousers, as if straightening them. He ran them from thigh to knee over and over again, before slipping his fingers into a hole in the fabric at the side of his leg—ripped by an errant blade and sticky still from his own blood—where he pulled at several threads; they in turn tugged at the seam that ran from hip to ankle and threatened to undo it.

Gimli rose to his knees and came round the rock to Legolas. He grabbed both the elf's worrying hands in his own and pressed them together, to still them. Legolas' hands went limp. He glanced up sharply at Gimli, but the dwarf was still looking at Legolas' hands, so he did not notice the guilty glint in his friend's eye.

"Alas!" said Legolas. "I am afraid to think on it. For I cannot yet give up hope—there may be at least one more battle ahead, and I need my head here."

Gimli sighed, and raised a hand to the elf's face, tapping his chin.

"Up with your beard, Legolas," he said, with a smile, "as you say."

"I have no beard to keep up, Durin's son!" Legolas replied laughingly.

Gimli swelled to hear the laugh back.

"Yes, well. Keep your chin up, Beardless One. For perhaps you yet misunderstand her words."

Legolas' eyes dropped again from the dwarf's face and he was somber again, and to Gimli looked suddenly very old—as old as Gandalf—but at once, in his confusion, as young as Pippin.

"There is not room, I think, in her lines, to misinterpret," he said.

Legolas stood from the rock twitchily, as if shaking off Gimli's reassurances, not daring to hope for himself.

"And there is no more time for me to dwell on this! It is selfish. My own life is naught in the ebb and flow of Arda, and in this never-ending battle against darkness. It has never much been my own to command, anyway," he continued, shrugging, "so if I fall at the next turn, I fall defending my friends and Middle-earth, those things I most love, and there is not, perhaps, a better way to leave this world."

Gimli sighed and slapped the elf on the back.

"If that is the dark hope that keeps you going," Gimli said, trailing off.

Legolas laughed suddenly and threw back his head, dirtied hair catching sunlight on it and shimmering dully as if to reflect his sudden and inexplicable merriment. Gimli laughed in brusque amusement at the elf's fickle mood.

"Let us find Aragorn," said Legolas. "At least we can bring him comfort—if not counsel—or make him eat. He worries much, and these leaders of Men do not seem to notice as we do. And perhaps tomorrow we will beg leave to go to the city, and see the hobbits!"

And then Legolas set off at a pace, and Gimli ran to keep up, hoping to keep his friend around a while longer, and yet annoyed with Legolas' fleeting attention to his own fate.

* * *

 **Part III: Back from the Black Gates**

* * *

"Do you remember when Mithrandir came upon us in Fangorn, and you wanted me to shoot him dead?" Legolas asked Gimli, eyes to the cloudy sky.

Gimli stood beside Legolas' prone form. He leaned with his back to the stone wall of Minas Tirith, watching the elf and the courtyard beyond him. Legolas straightened one leg into the air and rolled his ankle in delicate circles, and then took his thigh in hand and kneaded at the thick muscles that attached above his knee.

"Aye," said Gimli. "Of course I remember that."

Legolas lowered his leg to the ground, and then there was a long silence, with naught but the sweep of wind through city streets below and the catch of it at Gimli's cloak, muted but snapping fiercely around him.

Eventually, Legolas began to sing to himself.

Since the Black Gates, the elf seemed often unmoored, and—in his distraction and diminished guard—he revealed to his friends vaguely disturbing reflections, though he did not seem to find them disquieting himself. The change, however—and its portent—unsettled Gimli.

Gimli finally spoke.

"Why do you ask, Legolas?"

Legolas' song was stopped abruptly by his light laughter, and he pushed himself onto his elbows to look at the dwarf. He shrugged.

"I think of the incident often," Legolas said. "And, well, I am just glad I did not! It would have been embarrassing."

Gimli chuckled then, also, and relaxed at the answer; he slid down the rock to sit on the dirt and sparse grass of the courtyard, legs stretched out in a _V_ before him, back against the rock, head lifted, too, to the clouds.

But Gimli's thoughts turned gloomier, and eventually he spoke again.

"If you had shot Gandalf, and managed to fell him—which I do not now think is possible, you might have prevented him from delivering the Lady's messages to us, and you might not worry so about your death."

There was silence again in the night, and Gimli dropped his gaze from the sky to his friend. Legolas now had his hands clasped on his stomach in repose and his eyes were far away in rest—he had not heard him.

"Though I supposed not knowing would not change the outcome," Gimli muttered darkly, and sighed. "But blithely unaware is perhaps better than darkly ruminating."

The War was over, and Gimli's friend still here, not dead as the Lady Galadriel's words had them fear. Why, then, the heaviness on his friend's heart? The cloud that crossed his eyes between moments of joy, relief, and laughter? If Legolas had survived unharmed, and their Fellowship reunited, why was he yet sad? Legolas spoke occasionally now, with he and the hobbits, of the sea and the shore, but Gimli was not so versed in the lore of Elves, and thus could not know yet exactly what that foretold.

He would ask his friend, and ask him soon.

But, for now, the dwarf leaned back against the old stone of the city, and settled into its ancient thrum, until it—as the wind and spring breeze had done moments before for Legolas—lulled him to sleep.


	3. Part IV: Revelation, Confrontation

**.**

* * *

 **Part IV: Revelation, Confrontation**

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"Why do you speak so of taking to the sea, Legolas? Of seeing the gulls at Pelargir? Why the mournful songs hidden in bright tunes?"

Gimli grasped a roll of bread in his hands and tore it roughly in half; it had become their way to ask each other a volley of questions, and then discuss, for hours on end, their answers.

"You have changed now in your singing—" he continued, "you sing almost always in words none of us can understand, even Frodo."

"I sing in my own tongue, Gimli," said Legolas, and he tapped the flat side of his fork on a pile of fruit and poorly cooked meat on the plate before him. "Frodo does not understand the Woodland tongue, nor has he the need. I miss my folk sometimes; there is nothing wrong with that."

Gimli watched the elf bounce the fork off the sliced pears and small whole tomatoes for several moments until he reached out suddenly to still Legolas' hand in his own grip, and exclaimed.

"For Mahal's sake, Legolas, what is _wrong_ with you?" Gimli demanded, and dropped Legolas' hand back toward his plate so that the elf's fork knocked a tomato to the floor and sent it skittering away.

Then Gimli threw his half-roll onto the table with such force that Sam turned to look down toward the pair, who had, to his knowledge, been previously sat across from one another and amiably carrying on, as they usually did. Now he saw them both motionless, and glowering.

"Is everything all right?" called Merry from his seat beside Frodo.

Pippin was muttering to Sam, and Legolas' ears could hear his whispers ('They have not quarreled, that I've seen, since Lothlórien, haven't heard it but once when we found them at Isengard—until after the Black Gates, just now, recently—and back at Isengard it was something about death and the ocean birds, Merry wouldn't let me listen; I had never seen either of them so angry. Maybe Legolas is injured, or Gimli sick, to make them argue so now, when the war is won.'), which he listened to as he stabbed several pieces of fruit on the end of his fork.

"I am not injured, Pippin," Legolas said when the hobbit had finished his whispered supposing, and he smiled at Pippin, who still wore his Gondorian tunic. "And neither is Gimli ill. As elf and dwarf, we sometimes do not understand the songs in one another's hearts, and Gimli now does not understand mine. It is nothing more than a quarrel between close friends, as it wont to happen, and as we often have! I know you are familiar yourself with friendly quarrels."

Pippin blushed and smiled, and he looked down at his food before picking up his teacup and hiding his face in it.

Frodo looked at Legolas knowingly; though the hobbit was still recovering, he was not so ill himself to not see the changes in those around him, and he knew more of the constitution of elves than most. He noticed, too, the cloud that passed over the elf's bright eyes as his smile fell, and he looked away from Pippin.

Sam saw Frodo narrow his eyes at Legolas, and Frodo swayed slightly in his seat as he decided whether or not to speak.

"Mister Frodo?" Sam cried, ever vigilant. "What is it?"

Frodo had closed his eyes to those around him, and seemed, maybe, to not realize he was speaking.

"The pull of all elves to Valinor," he said quietly, "latent entirely in Wood-elves, quiet in their hearts until awoken by chance, or suffering."

Frodo opened his eyes and leaned forward over his plate, so he could look down the table more clearly at the elf. Gimli sat across from him, frowning. Frodo continued, surprised.

"But Legolas, now you don't just feel it in your heart, as a story of your people, or a supposition—do you? You look like the sea-longing is now in your soul. It must be pulling you away!"

Legolas' eyes grew wide and he sucked in a sharp breath of air. He cut his eyes quickly toward Gimli; Legolas felt exposed and, unexpectedly, betrayed. Had he not been clear enough in his pining to avoid such a dramatic revelation as this? Had he not said it was so, in as many words? He was certain his distraction, at least since the Black Gates, had been painfully apparent.

Gimli turned his head with a snap to look at the elf. He fixed Legolas with a withering glare, and then, veritably, exploded.

"Valinor! You will leave for _Valinor_? That place beyond the reach of men and dwarves and little folk? Your heart is pulled so keenly, and you did not _tell_ _me_?"

"It is not as we first feared," whispered Legolas, placating; he had closed his eyes—so it _was_ a surprise. "It is not death."

"It is as good as!" Gimli yelled. "It is as good as to those you would willingly leave behind!"

"You think I succumb to this willingly?" Legolas cried, and he surprised himself with the outburst.

He opened his eyes and stared at Gimli as if he were the only one privy to their conversation; his gaze was intense and his countenance fierce, and his fork quivered slightly in his hand.

"It is not willingly that I would give in to this thing that pulls me away from the only home I have known—no more willingly than I would fall to a foe on the battlefield!

"I do not feel terror, Gimli;" he hissed. "I am not often scared. But there is a force that frightens me with its bewitching demands and blissful promises. And I am not sure I even believe there is anything beyond the Sundering Sea! For my people have not seen it."

"So it _could_ be death, then," Gimli countered. "You may sail down the river with not but a few months' supplies and then find no rest at journey's end. You may die instead alone and adrift on a ship in the middle of the sea—that is suicide!"

"That is perhaps an irrational fear," said Legolas, evenly, one hand clenched on the table's surface and whitening at the knuckles; the hand holding his fork had twisted sideways so it was now parallel with the table, and a cube of pear slid off it to land on his plate with a quiet thud.

Gimli blustered.

" _You_ are perhaps an irrational elf!" he said.

"You think me irrational? Do you, then, think all my kith and kin across the ages irrational, friend Gimli?" Legolas asked, suddenly calm, but pulsing with energy, like a thunderhead moving quietly across a plain before its storm. "I cannot control this longing anymore than you may control your draw to the stone and mountains, the Glittering Caves, and I to my homeland and Fangorn.

"I am being pulled _in two_ ," he said, with emphasis, "between what I know and with which I am comfortable—but which leaves me now with a heavy heart—and the unknown, without my friends, nor family, if it turns out there is naught on the other side.

"And there is no one here to know of the pain in my choosing. It does not matter how much I talk to you, nor to Merry and Pippin, for I am alone fully elf-kind, and alone Silvan, and alone here—it sometimes seems—in this city of stone, where you apparently use _forks_ to politely eat _fruit_!"

Legolas gesticulated with the silver for emphasis, and the second cube of pear slipped from the end of the fork and flew across the table in a low arc, bouncing off Gimli's arm to the bench below.

All eyes in the hall were on the strange elf who now insulted their etiquette.

"You knew you would not die," the dwarf said in realization, quietly shocked. "You have understood the call since Pelargir."

Gimli watched Legolas' face the entire time he spoke, to read in it the elf's true intentions, but after that first accusing statement, Legolas dropped his eyes to the table like a stone through still water and would not look up.

"You have spoken and sung of leaving openly, now, for weeks, and yet I did not understand. I believed you only spoke grandly of the sorrow of the elves; that you yourself only thought on it, or were caught up in some grand elven metaphor—not that you were actually _compelled_ by the gulls' cries to leave Middle-earth! I did not even _entertain_ that idea, because I thought you would speak with me of it first, as your friend, as we speak frankly of all things."

Gimli knew his voice rose in volume as his hurt caught up to his words; he heard how its timbre was affected by the braying of betrayal. Gimli continued.

"But now… _Now_ , I realize you spoke of it openly only because you had already made your choice, and you know even now that you will leave, and you know that it will be still, to us—so soon after the War!—like you have died."

Gimli paused in his speaking to reach across the table and pull roughly at Legolas' sleeve to demand his attention. When Gimli released him, Legolas' forearm trembled once, like a young beech steadying itself after a gust of wind, but the elf did not otherwise stir.

"You are _cowardly_ in this, Legolas," Gimli finished, crossing his arms tightly across his chest and desperately awaiting a reaction, "so you did not dare to tell me directly. You could not bear it."

There was utter silence among the companions, and then around the mess hall. Pippin's mouth was slightly ajar and his eyes shone with stress-born tears, to see his friends fight so, and Merry looked pained. Someone knocked over a pitcher of water at the far end of the room, and a child exclaimed gaily, and then another began to cry.

It was both silent and cacophonous.

Legolas did not look at Gimli—he could not. He sat very still with his shoulders straight but his head dipped. His loose honey hair fell across and hid his face and was moved by the soft inhale and exhale of his suddenly hissing breath, as if his teeth were clenched but air moved forcefully between parted lips, a growl, perhaps, behind the curtain of hair. It was the only thing about him that moved—strands swayed toward his mouth to catch at his lips, and then away again—until he lowered his fist and fork slowly to the table.

Gimli could tell Legolas thrummed with the desire to flee; he looked like a man caught between a band of orcs and a rock-face, a deer trapped at the edge of a cliff with a wild animal at its heels, and it pained Gimli to force the elf to stay so miserably still to hear him out.

"Legolas…" Gimli began in his gentlest voice.

But that was all he could say, for Gimli was confused by warring feelings of anger and betrayal, and also love for his friend—and then an immense frustration with his own stupid, dwarvish naïveté!—and he did not know what to do.

So Frodo spoke instead, though Legolas still did not move nor look up to his companions.

"You are not alone, Legolas," Frodo said quietly; he noted the defeated manner in which Legolas held his fork now in a loose fist, and the exhausted glare he fixed to the table from behind his hair. "You are not alone here, for you have friends, and you are also not alone here in your feelings. You are not the only one who has toyed with the idea of begging leave from Middle-earth."

There was a beat, and then the elf looked up at Frodo. Legolas was reinvigorated, but he also looked very ashamed.

"Frodo," Legolas breathed softly, and his grey eyes sought to hold Frodo's tired but bright gaze throughout his heartfelt apology. "I was being selfish to speak such things aloud. The ring is destroyed, and this darkness in my heart? I can only now blame myself. We have been released from enduring fear, and I from fighting things I have known since I was a child—it is over and we are safe, but instead of jubilation, I despair. It is not right. I am so sorry to have said these things out loud. I did not think."

"No, Legolas" Frodo said, and he shook his head sadly; Legolas seemed for a moment to flinch—they had all been changed through closeness to the Ring. "I think you have been doing _too_ much thinking. You likely need to rest for a while—your body and your mind—to come to a sound decision. Maybe you and Gimli should finish this discussion later, and elsewhere."

Sam shrank at Frodo's elbow—he would almost have rather walked back to Oroduin than willingly engaged in the conversation before him, for it was deep and gloomy and strange, and far above him.

Voices around the room resumed their conversation and overshadowed the conflict at the small table; they suffused it, momentarily, with a semblance of normalcy.

Gimli crossed his arms and caught anew the elf's gaze.

"Humph," he said. "Well, I will follow you, where ere you go. You will not get rid of me so easily!"

"And I would not hope to!" Legolas exclaimed.

He looked away from Frodo as if their exchange were already forgotten, and as if Gimli were again the only person in the hall; it would not have mattered at that point whether the Valar themselves had swept into the mess hall and demanded Legolas and Gimli leave it, so intent was Legolas now on making Gimli understand.

This swiftness with which the elf could shift his attention, and the intensity with which he then focused fully on a person, was, to Gimli, often disconcerting, and it was now.

"But if I built a ship and left?" Legolas queried, tilting his head to the side in consideration, entirely reasonable once more. "I have never heard of a dwarf being permitted passage to the Undying Lands."

"I would jump into the sea after you," said Gimli simply. "We have too many adventures yet to make."

"And after you jump, what then?" Legolas said, with a return to harshness, and it shocked Gimli to see the elf's eyes shine oddly, as if perhaps—so very suddenly—he might cry.

All the hobbits respectfully turned their heads from their fierce and volatile elf, except for Frodo. He glanced at Sam, and then his hands, and then his gaze lingered again on his dear friend Sam, before his eyes darted away down the table, though Frodo did not see elf or dwarf at all, caught as he was in his own troubled contemplation.

Gimli did not speak.

"Will you grow gills and fins and follow my ship until the point at which you cannot any more chase it?"

His voice was just less than a tremulous yell, his hair pushed back from his shoulders and his face plainly distraught.

"Nay, Gimli—" Legolas cried, "if I have to go, you could not follow."

"Do not be preposterous, Legolas," said Gimli. "I—"

"So I will not go."

Legolas crossed his arms against his chest, and looked Gimli fully in the eyes, and was as composed again as if they were only discussing the weather.

"I will stay selfishly, for me," Legolas continued calmly, "however much pain I may endure for it, for I could not find true joy anywhere, even on the other side of the sea, without friends such as those here. I will stay for my love of you, Gimli, and for my love of the lord of the White Tree, and then leave Middle-earth only when you all have passed from its splendor."

Legolas dropped his fork and pear to the table with a soft clatter. He wiped his hands on his lap distractedly.

There was silence at the table, and the hall was hushed but not quiet. Legolas and Gimli watched one another for a time, cautiously.

"I thought you already knew," Legolas finally whispered.

He looked now with great compassion at the dwarf. Gimli huffed and tried to maintain his exasperation.

"Legolas, how could a dwarf know the extent of your sea-longing?" Gimli demanded quietly. "How would I know what it meant _at all_ , if you did not tell me?"

"I thought I had told you," said Legolas, his eyes wide and imploring. "I thought I was clear."

Gimli shook his head and said coolly, "You are wrong, my friend, in that."

Legolas was quiet and after a moment shook his head, as if rousing himself from an unpleasant dream. Then he rose abruptly, stuffed a roll of bread in his pocket, and left the table in haste.

"Where do you go?" Gimli called at Legolas' retreating back, alarmed, and he stood so quickly from his own seat that the chair screeched behind him.

"Away," Legolas said vaguely, as he walked.

"Away where?" Gimli asked, more to himself than anyone else, but Legolas' keen ears heard him as he turned sharply round the corner at the door.

He continued, in that moment, the turn, by pivoting on the balls of his feet. Once facing the dwarf again, Legolas threw his arms into the air noncommittally, and then spoke a string of words in his own language—they tripped over each other in melodious rancor in his rush to answer Gimli's question. Legolas either did not notice—or did not care—that he yelled in a language none but him understood. His roiling sentence ended with an expletive "Gimli!" and then Legolas was gone, taking quickly to the corridors.

Everyone in the room stared at the door through which the distressed elf had swept, and they were confused by the tempers and desperation of his fading race.

As Gimli gaped at the empty doorframe through which Legolas had just passed, he realized—with a rush of words and images and previously untapped emotion—that Legolas had, perhaps, in his own way, told Gimli that he wanted to leave, and that Gimli had refused to hear it.

Gimli dropped his head into his hands; his elbows rested on either side of his plate, and his sturdy fingers caught in the coarse hair above his brow.

Certainly, Legolas had not been explicit, but he had been as explicit in his cry for help as a dwarf could expect a wood-elf to be, unless Legolas had stated, Gimli thought humorlessly: 'I am scared to go—I will talk about my moods once, and then I will sing about them until you tire of me, so please continue to pay me mind' which was, Gimli knew, an incredulous expectation for Legolas.

Besides, Gimli knew Legolas well enough now to guess, most times, what he meant when he spoke, or when he sulked or yelled or laughed, without such plain instruction as that. After long months on a longer road, Gimli furthermore read his friend's moods in the crease at the corner of his lips, the angle in the curve of his shoulders, the way he spoke certain words, or didn't speak at all.

Like every person, Legolas was a puzzle, and Gimli—of all people—should have been able to figure him out.

Gimli felt shame creep up his cheeks. He was now not only angry and sad and too moved to feign indifference, but also deeply embarrassed by his neglect. He massaged his temples roughly.

Merry finally broke the long silence among the friends.

"He may have lost his mind a little, these last few weeks," said Merry. "I don't think he knows what to do when all wars are won."

Gimli swallowed dryly and looked up. He avoided Frodo's gaze, who now stared at him openly. Gimli suddenly found he was not hungry at all.

"Legolas does not lose his mind," said Aragorn, who had passed by the hall and witnessed the unfolding scene; he crouched now on his knees by the hobbits and Gimli, and spoke quietly. "He has always been capricious and perhaps too considerate of his comrades—when we could not find you and Pippin, he was distraught, Merry, and I had to stop him from foolishly driving forward in the night, just because his heart burned to find you. It is his way. Legolas suffers now grief and guilt, and though of the hardier elvish kind, it will pass, and the sunshine and exuberance of our elf will come back to us. Give him a few days."

Aragorn took Legolas' abandoned plate and stood up; he began to walk away.

"You heard?" Gimli asked, calling him for a moment back. Aragorn turned.

"I heard," Aragorn said, and shrugged, tilting his head to the side so his hair fell from behind his ears. "And I might have guessed as much."

Gimli scowled.

"But Legolas is made of much stronger stuff than he is given credit for."

And then, Aragorn was quickly gone and disappeared, as if he were but a wise daydream.

"And there goes Strider," said Sam in disbelief, "always sneaking in exactly where and when he's needed!"

Young Pippin slipped into the seat beside Gimli, and took the dwarf's rough hand in his small one, and beckoned for the other hobbits to scoot down the table. With that, Pippin began to try to cheer Gimli, as Legolas usually would, were he not the very cause of Gimli's desolation.

After a few minutes of teasing and ribald laughter, and a distractedly crafted tale from Frodo of Sam as a boy, it very nearly worked.

Gimli glanced once to the door through which Legolas had left like a tempest, and knew he would have to wait for the elf to find him, whenever he was ready to face his grief.


	4. Part V: Reflection

**Author's note:** In this section, flashbacks in italics are summaries of scenes in LotR, though a little more...broadly interpreted.

* * *

 **Part V: Reflection**

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Later that night, Merry and Pippin walked Gimli back to the room he shared with the elf. In the eerie stillness, stiff as a board on his solitary cot beside the door, Gimli felt Legolas' absence starkly and wondered if this was the feeling he had dreaded the past few months whenever he contemplated Legolas' death, or departure. It was the unsureness of the return that made him sick to his stomach—as if adrift at sea—and Gimli thought that it must truly be that fear that chased him away from indulging his friend's contradictory heartache since their return to Minas Tirith.

Gimli gazed at the empty mattress tucked beneath the open window. It was clear from its state that Legolas had come back to the room before he took off, to wherever he had gone, for the contents of his pack had been dumped upon his bed.

Sundry clothes and personal affects were strewn across it: the empty pack, a brooch and a comb, a whetstone, some bowstring, a torn tunic, a piece of bread wrapped in a handkerchief, a pouch stuffed with needle and thread, a leather hair thong, bandages, a quiver spilling arrows—on top of neatly folded trousers that had fallen from their folds—and, finally, a sheet of crisp and newly-folded parchment—a message from home, Gimli knew. Legolas' bows leaned against the wall and his armguards were thrown beside them; the hilt of a short blade stuck out from beneath the thin pillow, on top of which Legolas had tossed his recently laundered undershirts. On the windowsill—in a perfect line—were the cap of an acorn, a clutch of leaves from Fangorn, a tin of beeswax, a tangle of yarn, and three pieces of dried apple—the elf was like a bird, Gimli thought.

He observed his own belongings—mail folded neatly with his helm set on top of it, his clothes stacked evenly on the small table at the far wall. His neat pack and axe were tucked underneath his cot in perfect order.

They were too different, and yet much the same. Gimli made his own order, but without a wood in which to retreat nor an objective with which to occupy his time, Legolas had become, unexpectedly, a whirlwind.

He wondered what it felt like to live like that. There was much about his closest friend that he did not yet know, or had not listened to.

Gimli recalled a memory.

 _It was the day after the battle at Pelennor, and they sat with the hobbits outside the Houses of Healing. Gimli watched Legolas stare unseeingly across the plains; he noticed the distress and elation mixed together on the elf's fair face, as his eyes alternately focused on the horizon, and then darted sharply across the sunlit landscape. Gimli heard Legolas despair openly of the gulls' cry, of his kind's perilous longing. Gimli remembered telling the elf to not speak so, for they had much more to do; he remembered Merry begging the elf to stay. Legolas had seemed to assent, to trail off, and the conversation moved on. Later, Legolas again brought up the sea-longing, but Gimli shut him down, so they spoke of other things. Gimli was conscious of Legolas' drifting attention after that point, and then the elf quietly excused himself, and walked away absentmindedly; he slipped from his companions and wound down through the levels of the city to the gates, toward the battlefield, all the while singing to the sea._

Gimli shifted in his bed and rolled on his side to fully face the window.

 _At Cormallen, the night they had been reunited with Frodo and Sam—they rejoiced and shared in each other's company. But when all laid down for rest, Gimli saw Legolas wander from his friends, to go into the woods, he said, wherein lay the great river that lead inevitably—he had even said!—to the sea. The sea! He walked with intent and seemed unchangeable, and Gimli closed his eyes._

Gimli was certain that it was that spring night under the stars, after the final battle at the Black Gate—in his rambling about the trees of Ithilien—that Legolas realized he had run out of time to die. Legolas would have known then, without a doubt, that the only explanation for the dread and the longing in his heart was truly the fate of his kind; that he was called to Valinor, and he had a choice to make. Legolas would have been happier to deny his heart or die in battle than betray his friends or abandon his homeland—if that was what it came to—yet a choice had been demanded of him. So Legolas made the half-choice, Gimli guessed—to not yet make a choice at all, and to not burden his friends anymore with his sorrow.

Oh, Gimli had seen it all! And misunderstood. Or been, more likely, deliberately ignorant. It was a misunderstanding of his own making, aided by Legolas' mercurial elven communication.

Gimli threw the thin sheet from himself with a huff, and stood swiftly. He paced around the room for a few minutes, and then stalked to his friend's bed. He tidied Legolas' things and patched the hole in the elbow of the torn tunic. He packed the loose items into Legolas' pack—all those little things that fit together to make the whole—and folded the mess of discarded clothes; he lined them up neatly at the foot of the mattress, so the elf could slip easily into rest when he decided to return.


	5. Part VI: Learning to Speak, Listen

**.**

* * *

 **Part VI: Learning to Speak and Learning to Listen**

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The next evening, when it was nearly dark, Gimli took to the upper levels of Minas Tirith to clear his mind of the long day. Legolas had not returned to their quarters the night before after his tidying, nor joined his companions for lunch that day, nor was he to be found walking the city and giving aid as he normally might. With Aragorn spending now all his time with Faramir and Gandalf in planning the kingdom's restoration and managing emissaries, Gimli was left to his own devices, and that day he had passed his time with the hobbits, watching out of the corner of his eye for a flash of brown or green or gold, so he might accost the elf and demand a proper conversation, or offer, perhaps, an apology.

What Gimli did _not_ expect to find in his wandering, however, was Legolas.

The elf laid loosely on the highest parapet of the fifth level of the city, one arm falling over the wall's edge and the other stretched above him on the flat stone, as if reaching for something just beyond his fingertips. His legs were crossed at the ankles and he was singing, entirely unconcernedly, under his breath.

"Elf!" Gimli yelled, and he caught Legolas—uncharacteristically—by surprise, for the elf had been blocking out the bustle of the city as it settled into its evening routine.

Legolas scrambled to sit and then dropped gracefully from the wall to land crouched. He stood and leaned against the cool stone and, crossing his arms, looked at the dwarf.

"Gimli!" he exclaimed. "You have noticed I am an elf! Well done, strange friend."

Gimli ignored his statement with a wave of his hand and spoke.

"Where have you been?"

"It has only been a short time," Legolas said.

"It has been a day," said Gimli.

"Short even in the telling of Men, then!" Legolas justified.

Gimli took a step toward Legolas and demanded again.

"Where have you been?"

Finally, Legolas shrugged and slid to the ground beside the wall, crossing his legs in a diamond in front of him. When he spoke his voice was soft and lyrical, like a song.

"Over hill and dale, into Ithilien, to the stables, across the plains and to the river," Legolas whispered, faintly trailing off. "To the sea, and to the smithy…"

Gimli sank to the ground in front of Legolas, and sat so that their knees were only inches apart.

"You jest, Legolas," said Gimli gruffly.

"I do," he agreed, and he looked up from his lap to meet Gimli's eyes.

"Where have you been, then?"

"Looking for green things, Gimli! There was nothing but the depth of stone here to share in my joy."

"Your friends share in your joy," said Gimli, raising his eyebrows.

"Aye. I know."

Legolas' fingers danced over a twist of grass that had fought through a cracked flagstone near the wall; they skimmed over a patch of healthy moss to the left of his hip, and he brought his hand to his nose to smell of it.

"You grow stranger every day," Gimli said.

"Perhaps."

There was silence, in which Gimli continued to watch Legolas, and Legolas leaned back to watch the stars emerge overhead.

"About yesterday," Legolas finally said.

Gimli raised his eyebrows again and waited for the elf to continue.

"It has become spring," Legolas said, surprising Gimli. "There should be daffodils and cheerful things abound, but I have not seen even a snowdrop in this place!"

Gimli sighed at the elf's evasion and prompted his friend.

"Legolas," said Gimli, "I am sorry for my rash words yesterday. I did not understand—I was not only naïve but willfully, _willfully_ ignorant—and I was hurt. I was unkind."

"As was I," said Legolas. "It was terrible, and it burned my heart. I did not mean to deceive you."

"I do not think you meant it," said Gimli, uncomfortably. "I am not so sure now that you actually deceived me at all. I have thought on it."

Legolas sighed, and finally met Gimli's eyes.

"Speak now, Legolas, and be comforted," said Gimli.

"Yesterday, then."

"Yesterday," Gimli affirmed,

Legolas shifted against the stone, and Gimli thought for a moment, amusedly, of a bear scratching its back, and then Legolas began.

"It is simple. I choose to live here in Middle-earth."

The elf was quiet again and Gimli raised his eyebrows for a third time, a request for further elaboration.

"If you will have me as a companion—" Legolas explained, "until such a time as you find someone else to share in your life—I choose to live this side of the sea, for you and for the Wood-elves that I might, with leave, bring to Ithilien; word finally arrived that I have been released from service to my King."

Legolas drummed his fingers on his knees and tilted his head to the side, as if listening to something Gimli did not hear.

"I feel happy to be here, I guess," he continued, "and happy to be alive to make the choice, and to dedicate myself to serve those I love, in the ways that I would, of my own accord. It is a blessing to have this choice, and I choose now with a lighter heart. I no longer feel trapped between Middle-earth and Valinor, between you and Aragorn and the sea, nor between life and, perhaps, death."

Gimli narrowed his eyes at Legolas and waited in silence for him to conclude.

"But I may need your help when despair comes upon me, for you to remind me why I stay, and the loss I would feel should I leave too soon," Legolas finally said, after a time. "I will try to be more direct with you, but you must give me permission, sometimes, to wander off—without you or anyone else—and trust that, eventually, I will come back."

He looked up to the sky and then back to the ground, where his fingers twisted in the sparse snarl of grass; his loose hair tangled under his chin and across his eyes, and looked unkempt in the dimness.

"Some time, I will need you to give me hope, as I have given you in dark times, in these shadowless days ahead. I hope in choosing to stay that this tug-o-war is over, but I fear I will never know if it is, unless the sea tugs mightily back."

Gimli watched Legolas, and Legolas looked up and watched Gimli, and then Gimli reached across to pat the elf's cheek and tilt his chin toward the blossoming night sky, where stars were rushing in, like new snow on a pond's dark ice—silver on black, they grew more abundant and luminous with each passing minute.

"Ah," said Gimli kindly, "so it is with longing."

He examined Legolas' uplifted face, whose eyes even now danced across the night sky.

"But," he said, and nodded firmly, "I will help you."

"Oh, that is excellent!" Legolas exclaimed, and Gimli dropped his hand from the elf's face as he turned his eyes to the dwarf. "You lead and I will, likely, follow. You comfort me. The stars even rejoice that I have found you. And so, too, does this tiny grasp of leaves!"

Gimli snorted in his laughter. Legolas plucked a blade of grass and held it between thumb and forefinger, right in front of his face—he blew it lightly out of his hand and toward the dwarf, and his eyes were bright as he laughed at Gimli's skeptical amusement. Gimli pulled out his pipe and tapped it on the ground by his knee; the elf coughed dramatically and shoved Gimli's shoulder, which made Gimli, and then Legolas, laugh again.

"I will learn to listen," Gimli said huskily, fumbling with the tie on his pouch of pipeweed. "And I am glad you talked to me."

Legolas smiled truly at the dwarf, and then spun on his seat so he could lie on his back—parallel to the wall, his head near Gimli's folded knees—to watch, unobstructed, the sky. He folded his hands on his stomach and was immediately lost in a new lilting song and the stars overhead, and Gimli soon fell into satisfied contemplation and was then, also, lost, but in the pleasure of the well-known routine of his pipe.

After all the riddles and secrecy, the bloody battles and overwhelming darkness, the misunderstandings and conflict, the unbelievable triumph of goodness, and the suffocating weight of loss, two peculiar people finally relaxed—at the dawn of a great age of Men—in the well-earned knowledge that they had many more years yet in Middle-earth, wherever it took them—even unto death—together.

"So am I," said Legolas after several long minutes—he spoke suddenly between lines of his song and then restarted the tune without missing a beat.

The dwarf _humph_ ed appreciatively, and repacked his pipe.

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 _And we have come to the end! As always, I adore positive feedback and constructive criticism. Therefore, please drop a review before you navigate back. Thank you for reading this story!_


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